The present invention is in the field of methods to provide access to services via the Internet.
The economy of the United States, and several other countries, is increasingly dependent upon value added by services, as opposed to tangible goods. Vast amounts of people, including professionals (such as doctors, lawyers, accountants) and service providers (such as specially trained technicians and people with specialized skills or knowledge), are employed by a service industry instead of by a manufacturing or distribution industry that is commonly associated with consumer or durable goods. As the pace of knowledge and technical advances has increased, the demand for specialists with detailed knowledge in narrow fields has increased. This has led to an ever expanding market for such services. However, while some such professionals have banded together to market their services, and provide a mechanism by which their collective services can be accessed, the distribution of such services is still limited by geography and a fundamental lack of an easy, economical, and viable service brokerage for such services. Furthermore, while there have been great advances in the production and delivery of goods, such as the xe2x80x9cjust in timexe2x80x9d concept, no such breakthrough has heretofore been made in the field of services.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved method of distributing services of multiple service providers to end users via a service brokerage. This invention solves this need through the use of the Internet.
The present invention is generally directed to a method for allowing a user to access one of a plurality of service providers through a service brokerage via the Internet. The user is presented with a set of private service provider chat rooms that are on-line, and each of these rooms is associated with a service provider. The set of private service providers can optionally be selected according to a preselected criterion of the user. The user selects a chat room of a chosen service provider, obtains access to the chat room, and then privately interacts with the chosen service provider via the Internet. The chosen service provider can receive a user profile before the user enters that provider""s chat room and control access to the chat room by rejecting the request of the user to enter the chat room. The user""s account is charged with a user service fee, and the service provider""s account is credited with a service provider fee, according to the length of time the user occupies the chat room.
In a first, separate aspect of the present invention, a user information file associated with the user is created with the service brokerage. The user information file can be made available to a chosen service provider who can modify the file. The user information file can also be transferred, along with the user, to a second service provider in a second chat room, who can also modify the file. The user can have access to the user information file after leaving any occupied chat room.
In another, separate aspect of the present invention, the user is presented with a schedule for a chosen chat room. The schedule can provide information as to when the chat room is expected to be on-line or unoccupied. The user can be allowed to sign a waiting list for when the chat room becomes available, and the user can receive automatic notification of such availability.
In yet another, separate aspect of the present invention, access to a chat room can be denied if the user account is below a predetermined threshold value, such as zero. An available amount of credit can be established in a user account by a payment from the user to the service provider, and the available credit can be reduced as the user account is charged a user service fee according to the length of time the user spends in an occupied chat room. The amount of time that a user can spend in a chat room can be limited by an available amount of credit or by a preselected threshold that cannot be exceeded within a preselected period of time absent a preselected approval process.
In still another, separate aspect of the present invention, a user account can be provided with coupons to reduce the user service fee for the user""s access to one or more of the plurality of service providers according to a preselected criterion.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved method for allowing users to access a plurality of service providers through a service brokerage via the Internet.
This and further objects and advantages will be apparent to those skilled in the art in connection with the drawings and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment set forth below.